Business and Benevolence

Abstract

Business activity, it seems, is the very model of cold, calculating, selfish conduct. Though some business persons sheepishly acknow ledge this, many others openly celebrate ruthless selfishness, extolling the profit motive, even greed, as business virtues.1 Yet if selfishness is a business virtue, while selfless benevolence is a moral virtue, then it seems that good persons cannot be good at business, and that the successful business person is a moral failure. While this hasty conclusion ignores the ample room for benevolent activities in one's non-business, personal life, it nevertheless suggests that something about business is incompatible with morality. Business ethics is a contradiction in terms, according to a familiar jest; and perhaps a subtle truth underlying that quip is just that the selfish profit motive successful business requires is intrinsically at odds with part of the requirements of morality. In order to take business ethics seriously, then, it is necessary to harmonize the apparent opposition between business selfishness and moral benevolence. Blending business and benevolence is the project of the present study, a project in which we shall find it fruitful to examine various traditional moral defenses of business and the profit motive. Though often used in conjunction, two separate strategies for addressing this problem are prominent: one challenges the moral indictment of self-interest or selfishness, attempting to exonerate the profit motive; another tries to justify business selfishness through its beneficial consequences. Finding both traditional strategies ultimately unsatisfactory, I show in the end how business and benevolence can be combined in profitable business activities which can also be morally virtuous.